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Can Playing Soccer Lead to Brain Damage? – 11/14/2012

November 14, 2012 -- Soccer is an extremely popular team sport, and one of the few that doesn't require any protective head gear. But, a small study of professional soccer players from Germany suggests that even in players without evidence of a serious head injury, playing soccer may cause changes to certain areas of the brain.

"We used sophisticated MR imaging to investigate the white matter in the brains of professional soccer players who had no symptoms and no known concussions, and compared to a group of swimmers, we found white matter changes in the brain," said the study's lead author, Dr. Inga Koerte.